


I thought that I would hurt myself (so I didn't have to see you hurt)

by SeventhStrife



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hurt/Comfort, Language, Mild Gore, Mild Gore Descriptions, Near Death Experiences, Pre-Relationship, Self-Sacrifice, Sherry Makes Jake Feel Too Old For This Shit, graphic description of gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeventhStrife/pseuds/SeventhStrife
Summary: On a mission gone awry, Sherry makes a call.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This came from scrolling through tumblr and seeing a prompt about a character looking out the window as it rained. This...just happened. Also, I left some details deliberately vague, like Jake and Sherry teaming up again, what their mission is about, how Sherry got hurt--if I started world-building around this, it never would have gotten posted. Just know that Jake and Sherry have teamed up sometime after the events of RE6, and they're not in a good spot.

“You’re gonna be fine, Supergirl.”

Sherry manages a breath of a chuckle. The rain washes away the blood and only she is aware of the true extent of the damage. Well, her, and maybe the one's following, easily able to pick up their trail. She’s tried to tell Jake, to warn him this is a bit worse than some shrapnel that he can just yank out, but he doesn’t have any time for her words. He’s too busy running and shooting, and Sherry’s just along for the ride, clutching his back like a pathetic, bleeding koala.

Behind them, a small hoard of the undead is chasing them. On a good day, Jake could out-run them, no problem. But being in unknown territory, with a dead weight on his back and roughing it in the rain through a dense forest—it’s a miracle he hasn’t fallen and broken his neck.

Every step Jake takes is a jarring pain, white-hot around her middle and she can feel her blood gush out, a sudden warm flood soaking her clothes while the rest of her grows cold.

Jake has to jump over a log and the impact of their landing makes Sherry cry out, the pain too great to stay confined behind her gritted teeth.

“Easy, easy, I know,” Jake says. His tone is calm, soothing, but Sherry can recognize a lost cause when she sees one. Yes, she’ll heal, but it’s taking too long. This may be Sherry’s last mission, but there’s no reason for it to be Jake’s.

_ “Fuck!” _

Jake’s breakneck pace comes to a sudden, abrupt halt, another agonizing pain for Sherry midsection. Sherry lifts her head from Jake’s neck and understands his sudden frustration.

They’re standing at a cliff’s edge. Below them, the storm has whipped the waters into an angrily churning surf, although the height isn’t too great and it looks relatively rock-free.

The moans and groanings of the hoard, before an uncomfortably-close bit of background noise, now rises to the thunderous volume that rivals the storm. Inside Sherry quakes despite her experience; she doesn’t dare look, but there must be so many…

Mouth dry, she manages, “You can swim, right?” She’s panting even though all she’s done is hold onto Jake.

“Yeah, but we’re definitely going to be separated the second I do and you  _ can’t  _ swim, not with that injury. Shit.  _ Shit.”  _ His voice lowers, a low murmur that’s clearly not for her. “Fuck, what do I do? What do I do?”

Carefully, so carefully, heart slamming against her chest, Sherry loosens her grip. From around his neck where her trembling arms rest, to her legs, curved just above his hips.

Her vision is darkening, her breaths more labored and faint, but she can still hear the hoard, can feel the steel-like tension in Jake’s body as he desperately tries to pull a miracle from thin air.

But Sherry’s a realist. Been one since she was a child, when Mom and Dad said I love you one moment and were gone the next. 

Without her, Jake leaps to safety and survive. With her, he’s overburdened and dies. 

There isn’t any contest.

_ “Ah!”  _ Sherry’s yell is loud and sudden. It’s even real. She just allows herself to finally vocalize the pain within her. 

The abrupt rigidity of her body lends credit to her act and Jake moves, quickly but gingerly peeling her from his back and holding her in his arms, taking a knee so he can support her against it.

“I’m...sorry, Jake.” Every breath is a chore.

“No, no, don’t do this to me. You’re gonna be fine, okay? We’ve been through too much to call it quits here.” Jakes words are harsh and angry but his eyes are bright with worry. Sherry manages a smile at the sight of it. “Come on,” he says. His voice is gentle, affectionate, even. “It’d be stupid if we died here.”

They’re running out of time. The hoard is only yards away and Jake’s head snaps up. He fires his gun in a series of quick shots and Sherry hears the thumb of a body to accompany each one. 

But instead of looking at their impossible odds, Sherry focuses on the sight before her: Jake, eyes blazing with defiance as rainwater sluiced down his face.

She drinks in every inch of his face, traces the scar on his cheek with her eyes, lingers a little on his lips, pressed into an angry, bloodless line.

_ I really wish I’d kissed those.  _ The thought is a sigh inside her, but she can’t muster the strength for bitterness. Maybe in her final moments.

Shaking, Sherry raises her rain-slicked fingers and rests her palm on Jake’s cheek, weakly angling his face towards her. 

Her strength is non-existent at this point, but Jake lets her do it, eyes wide and raw with something fragile.

“Sherry—”

“You’re right,” Sherry says. She’s barely whispering, but with Jake’s enhanced hearing she knows he can hear her perfectly.

Jake’s brow furrows. He casts a furtive glance at their uninvited guests, then back to her, clearly judging them to be a decent distance away. 

“I’m always right,” he says. “What do you mean specifically?”

Sherry’s still smiling. “It  _ would  _ be stupid if we both died.”

From deep within, Sherry musters a great strength and pushes Jake with all that she has.

There’s a split moment when Sherry can look right at Jake even as she crashes to the ground. She sees the surprise on his face, a surprise that quickly shifts into a complete, terrible horror. Anger bleeds into it and his mouth opens— 

Then, caught off guard and unbalanced, he tilts over the edge and plunges into the raging surf below.

A blink is all the time it takes, but it feels like an eternity. Sherry sags on the ground, for a moment awash with a profound relief so deep she feels weak with it. She’d been so scared it wouldn’t work…

The unsteady shamble of several dozens of the undead brings her to the situation at hand. 

Beneath her, blood is growing at a steady pool, a sick joke as her stomach burns and tears, desperately trying to repair the damage each breath rips into her. A minute, she estimates. One minute, and the dead will be feasting on her flesh.

“Oh, God,” Sherry says. She steels herself, then rolls on her side with a gasp of pain. 

By the time she’s staggered upright, the dead are close enough she can make out every decaying, festering deformity on their features, the gaping of their mouths and the gray, lolling tongues.

She has to try to survive, pointless as it may be. A fire, weak and flickering but there nonetheless, demands it of her. Sherry refuses to lie down and accept it.

Besides, she reasons with herself, lurching down the path in a gait that matches her undead followers, Jake would be furious with her if he found out she’d thrown in the towel. After tricking him so cruelly, she at least owes him an honest  _ try. _

So Sherry skirts the edge of the cliff, keeping herself together through sheer will and arms wrapped around her gaping wound. She’s only slightly faster than her pursuers and she knows the second she falters, they will be on her. She can smell their stench even through the downpour and the unnatural moans follow her all the way to where the tree line breaks up into a cave’s entrance.

Risk waking a bear or being eaten alive? Again, there is no contest. At least the bear would be quicker.

Sherry stumbles into the cave, knowing she’s trapping herself but unable to think past the pain. Maybe she could duck in time if she  _ did  _ encounter a bear, let  _ it  _ deal with them…

There’s no bear, but the cave is deep and branches into a few tunnels. Sherry chooses one at random, deeply hating how the enclosed walls make the moans echo and fill each space with the stench of death.

Sherry makes it into a small opening in the tunnel and there, on the far wall, is a crevice. She wedges herself in it, shuffling as far back as possible, until the tight walls refuse to let her move any further and the squeezing pressure on her stomach makes her see white for a sharp moment, and then black. Nausea rises but she swallows, knowing that in such close quarters and the amount of delirium she’s probably experiencing she’d drown in her own sick before she had the strength to push it from her mouth.

The dead crowd in and reaching arms stretch into the cavern. Sherry watches the hand as if from a far distance, feeling a certain fear but mostly only a deep lethargy.

The gray-skinned hand strains, grips the air, curls into a fist and opens again, but still stops several inches from Sherry. 

Several more reach in, filling the small crack of space with their wails of hunger but none can get  _ quite  _ close enough. 

Sherry is safe.

Safe until she starves, her mind helpfully supplies. Safe until blood loss and the weakness from her body trying to stitch itself back together makes her sway into grasping hands that will never tire of reaching for her. Safe until the cries of the dead drive her insane. Safe until the cramped, unmoving space makes her muscles begin to atrophy and claustrophobia sets in, and she runs out and the undead fall upon her, helping themselves to her emaciated body. Safe until— 

Sherry blacks out.

↔  
  


Awareness is frustratingly slow to come. She can feel the mattress beneath her, the sheet over her body, warm through thanks to her body heat. Each breath is free of pain and slowly, memory returns, enough to conclude that the gaping hole in her stomach is gone. She knows if she passed a hand over the area, all she would find is smooth, unblemished skin.

She releases a breath and opens her eyes. 

The room is familiar, a recovery area Sherry uses exclusively within the infirmary of the BSAA since she never needs any kind of surgery and nothing more severe than over the counter pain medication. The walls are a dull green and the far one has an obscure, wood-framed painting of a snow-capped mountain. The curtains are drawn on the window and a glance to the door shows her clothes and weapons lying neatly on a chair, as she’d requested back when she first began working in the field and woke in unfamiliar surroundings, stripped of her belongings and certain she’d been captured by the enemy.

She’s survived. Somehow, miraculously, Sherry has been rescued, although no matter how hard she concentrates, she can’t remember anything past the cave, the crevice, the reaching hands…

“Welcome to the land of the living.”

Thankful she’s not attached to any kind of heart monitor, Sherry jerks and looks at the corner of her room just out of her eye line, slightly behind her in the corner.

Jake sits there, the hard, cool look in his eyes at sharp odds with his easy words. 

He’s angry. Furious. Sherry can see it in his absolute stillness and his refusal to blink, but even still, she feels herself smiling, relaxing into the blankets.

“You’re okay,” she says.

The blank, cold mask falls away and in a movement faster than the human eye can perceive, Jake is above her, arms braced on either side of her head. His face is barely inches away and the white-hot fury on his face makes Sherry wish she could sink through the bed.

“And  _ you’re  _ a goddamn fucking  _ idiot.” _ He doesn’t raise his voice. He’s deathly quiet, terribly soft. Sherry’s never seen him like this and her heart slams against her chest, the breath stolen from her.

“You wanna know how we found you? It was real fucking simple. We followed the goddamn trail of blood you left. We killed over thirty B.O.W.’s and there you were. Wedged in a fucking hole, passed the fuck out.

And the best part? Your superpowers were kicking into overdrive and healed your stomach with the goddamn wall.”

Jake’s hand hovers over Sherry’s stomach, a feather-like touch she feels like a brand. Jake stares straight into her and she doesn’t dare look away, especially when memory makes his brow furrow and his voice rough.

“I had to—to fucking peel you off it. Ripped open the whole thing, scared half to death I’d left all your organs plastered to the walls.”

Sherry opens her mouth but Jake’s hand grips her arms, squeezing tightly in warning. She shuts her mouth.

“You screamed like hell. Gonna hear it my nightmares, that’s for damn sure. But you never woke up. Not once. You were just limp, like a doll.”

Jake closes his eyes and she can see his throat working as he swallows. Silence stretches, tense and strained, the only points of contact Jake’s hands on her and Sherry staring at him in shock.

“I  _ hated  _ it. So much. It was like...like you were already…”

Jake can’t say it, but Sherry knows and tears sting her eyes. She refuses to let them fall. She raises her arm and, with her limited reach, rests it against Jake’s side. It coaxes him into looking at her once more, the expression on his face wretched.

“I’m sorry, Jake. I really am. If there had been another way—”

_ “Fuck you, Sherry!”  _ His grip goes from tight to vice-like and Sherry gasps. “There were plenty of other fucking ways! You could have trusted me!”

When Sherry simply stares back at him in silence, shocked at such a rare, emotional outburst, Jake finally seems to remember himself and his position. He releases her arms with a curse and distances himself from her. He stands at the window, lips pursed, fingers tapping on the edge of the frame. He glares out, still very obviously seething.

Sherry gives them both a moment, for Jake to cool down and for her blood pressure to return to normal. Never, in a million years, would Sherry fear Jake hurting her, and she still doesn’t. But to know that she could cause such a strong reaction, over something as dispensable as her life...it borders on baffling. She’s an agent of the BSAA. Every mission could be her last. She’d thought he’d understood that.

Sherry shifts to sit up, wanting to at least be upright for what is shaping up to be a lengthy, emotionally-draining conversation, she’s caught off-guard at the sudden, sharp stab of vertigo.

“Oh.  _Ugh."_

She sways, vision blurring for a moment, but then Jake’s there, cradling her around her shoulders, propping up a few pillows, easing her back onto them with so gentle a touch she feels tears sting again. She’s made him so angry yet he still…

When Jake makes to pull away Sherry covers his hand with hers where he still grips her shoulder. He doesn’t make eye contact and looks down, glaring at her sheets.

“Thank you, Jake,” she says.

Jake looks up, weary and wary and confused. “For what?”

“For caring. No one’s ever cared that much before.”

“Goddamnit, Sherry.”

Jake just collapses, like his bones have suddenly quit propping him up and he crashes to his knees, arms going around Sherry’s waist to grip tight and drag her closer so he can bury his head in her lap.

Sherry waits until he’s settled before tentatively resting a hand on the crown of his bowed head, heart racing. When he doesn’t protest, she strokes him, savoring the feel of the short hairs on her skin. It’s surprisingly soft.

Another silence steals over them, only this one is quiet, soothing, and free of tension.

“Promise me,” Jake says. His voice is low, as if in deference to this small, intimate bubble they’ve unexpectedly created.

“What?”

Jake lifts his head and Sherry’s hand falls to the side.

_ “Don’t  _ do that again. Don’t...just decide things for me. Don’t take my choice away from me. Don’t  _ die.” _

Heart aching, knowing she would do it all over again if she had to, Sherry nods. 

“Okay, Jake.”

Jake’s eyes narrow. “You’re a shit liar.”

Sherry laughs at that, feeling a bit sheepish, shaking her head. “I can’t just let you die, Jake.”

“And I’m not about to let my last memory of you be you bleeding out at the edge of a fucking cliff. You pull that shit again, I swear I will climb back the fuck up and throw myself at the feet of a thousand B.O.W.s before I let you sacrifice yourself for me.”

Sherry’s breath caught. “Jake—”

“Shut up, Sherry. All I want to hear is  _ ‘yes Jake, you’re right, I’ll never do something so stupid ever again, I’m sorry.’ _ ”

“I...I’m sorry.”

Jake scowls at her rather impressively, but Sherry can’t be swayed. To say anything else would be a lie, and Sherry doesn’t lie. Especially not to Jake.

Jake finally breaks their staring contest to roll his eyes.

“I guess that’s as fucking close as I’m going to get.”

Sherry shrugs. “Sorry.”

Jake rises to his feet, looks around the room, and settles back on her. He stares for a long moment and the almost-easy mood that had settled over their banter vanishes like smoke in the wind. Some indefinable emotion roils just beneath the surface of Jake’s skin, Sherry can  _ feel  _ it, and then Jake moves.

He’s on the bed, this time straddling her although he’s careful not even an ounce of his weight rests on her. His arms fold her into his embrace and after a startled moment a pleased flush paints Sherry’s skin a faint pink and she returns the hold, sliding her hands up his back to grip his thin shirt tightly.

Jake’s big hands span over her back and she feels as fragile as a sparrow, in the powerful embrace of a tiger.

“I missed you, Supergirl,” Jake says. His voice is quiet, hoarse. Sherry’s throat clicks under the force of her swallowing.

Unable to speak, eyes hot, Sherry simply screws them shut and nods, burying her face in Jake’s chest.

They stay within the cocoon of their embrace for a long, long time, feeling something torn ragged within them slowly mend. 

**Author's Note:**

> Man, that has to be the longest build up to a damn hug I've ever written in my life. Comments please! Was the angst good? Did it feel authentic? Did you experience a rare moment of empathy for Jake Muller of all people??? Let me know!


End file.
